Page Nine

Sunday, July 20, 2014

According to polls, voters believe corruption remains a serious problem. As the Fiesta Bowl scandal recently proved, powerful people in Arizona simply are not prosecuted for public corruption anymore. The “chilling effect” on prosecutors following the “witch hunt” against Andrew Thomas is real.

Unelected judges enjoy absolute power—never a good recipe for clean government. To change this, Andrew Thomas will end the charade of phony judicial “elections,” in which judges’ names appear on ballots every two years, voters are kept in the dark about their performance, and all judges are retained in office every election cycle. Instead, he’ll work to ensure voters are given meaningful, independent information about judges. That way, voters can make informed choices at election time about whether to retain them.